Did you know people HATE Alejandro González Iñárritu's films, walked out of Amores Perros during its Premiere, and stopped being friends with Cole because of it? And on that note: we dig into why a movie this technically towering is so hard to actually love.

Amores Perros (2000), starring Gael García Bernal and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is Cole's birthday pick this season on The Arc (thearc.fm), and it does not go the way birthday picks are supposed to go. The film is a landmark of Mexican cinema, told in three interlocking stories connected by a single car crash — but we spend most of the episode arguing about whether its dog-as-metaphor structure is a stroke of genius or almost embarrassingly literal. Robby gets attached to the wrong story and never recovers, Jaclynn spends two years thinking the title meant "I Love Dogs," and Cole realizes live, on mic, that the film is basically about his parents.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-08 (GOOD LUCK//SORRY)

• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)
• Tubi (free streaming)

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.

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Amores Perros is Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2000 debut, three interlocking Mexico City stories bolted together by a single car crash — a dog-fighting kid trying to run away with his brother's wife, a supermodel whose lapdog vanishes under the floorboards of her new apartment, and El Chivo, an ex-guerrilla turned assassin with a pack of strays and a daughter he abandoned. It's the film that put Iñárritu, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on the map, and, as Cole puts it, nearly every "raw, visceral, authentic" film made since has been speaking its language whether it knows it or not. You cannot legally stream or even buy it in the United States, which is how Cole ended up getting a library card specifically to check out a DVD, and how one very kind librarian stopped talking to him the moment she saw what he'd put on hold.

This is a birthday-film episode — each of us picks an all-time favorite to revisit, and this one is Cole's, which turns out to be the whole show. Robby found it electric and beautifully shot and was fully in until the story handed off to the second couple, at which point he got genuinely angry, a reaction he almost never has to movies. Jaclynn, who spent two years believing the title meant "I Love Dogs" because she's half Mexican and coasting on overconfidence, was out at the DVD menu and had to switch off her empathy to get through the dog violence at all. And then, somewhere in the third act — the dead father breaking into his daughter's apartment to frame a photo of himself over her bed, the assassin's whole arc — it stops being a movie about a movie and becomes Cole visibly split open, recognizing his own parents in the supermodel and the man who ruined himself caring for her. Watching a friend realize in real time that his favorite film is a diagnosis is not comfortable, and we don't pretend it is.

What we actually argue about is whether the dog-as-metaphor is too on the nose (each animal an externalized organ of its owner's suffering), whether it's just a less pop-culture-poisoned Pulp Fiction or something genuinely its own, and why nearly every shot sits at a strange, low, claustrophobic angle — Jaclynn's theory being that we're often at dog height, Cole's being that a frame taken from the eyeline of an average-height man has added nothing to anything, ever. There's a clip of Iñárritu himself in here talking about the banned bleach-bypass process that gave the film its milky, over-contrasted blue, and a running, affectionate grudge about how Cole's own best camerawork is quietly haunted by this movie's final shot. It ends where it began: Jaclynn asking Cole if he's okay. He isn't, and he'd like a good cry and a full night's sleep. We'd recommend the film, and we'd recommend not watching it alone.

02:12 — Who Brought Amores Perros, and How Do You Describe Amores Perros?

We describe Amores Perros as a maximalist film that mirrors its director's personality, then joke about our shared "killjoy" horoscope sign before comparing how graphically each of our two birthday-film picks handles a dog's death — Robby's film only implies it happens offscreen while Cole's shows the animal's visible suffering in bloody, sound-designed detail — with Cole noting he can tell a long story about what he already knew about the film going in.

04:33 — Robby Actually Reviews The Film!

Robby explains that he watched Amores Perros for the first time because it's Cole's favorite movie, praises how watchable, energetic, and visually striking it is (especially its portrayal of Mexico City), admits the dog violence shocked him but argues it works as a meaningful metaphor for how the characters treat each other, and then Jaclynn teases Cole for being visibly moved before comparing the experience of rewatching a beloved film as an adult to realizing it exposes uncomfortable truths about the person who loves it.

08:46 — How Jaclynn Found Out The Film Showed Dog Fighting

Jaclynn tells a long personal story about how, based on a matching-hat gift from Cole and her mistaken belief that "Amores Perros" translates simply to "I Love Dogs," she spent two years thinking his favorite film was a sweet movie about dog ownership until a friend's horrified reaction clued her in that it actually involves extensive dogfighting and animal death, which leads the group into a discussion of why on-screen animal harm disturbs audiences more than human violence and how convincingly the film's dog-death scenes were faked.

23:19 — When Were You In or Out for Amores Perros?

Jaclynn explains she was "out" on Amores Perros before even watching it (after hearing about the animal deaths and half-jokingly citing writing "the DVD menu" in our shared notes doc as her breakout point), listing the elements she normally likes in a film that this one still didn't win her over with, while the others push back and single out the movie's closing shot as a standout, with one host arguing it visibly influenced Cole's own cinematography (comparing it to a shot he later used), which Cole first denies and then half-admits.

27:19 — Audiences Walked Out of the Film

We rib Cole for picking such an on-the-nose, stylistically maximalist favorite, then play a clip of Iñárritu describing how audiences actually walked out during screenings at Cannes and the New York Film Festival, before comparing our own entry points into his filmography (mostly starting with Birdman, which we disagree about) and debate whether Amores Perros is a weaker, more stylistically derivative cousin of Pulp Fiction.

29:06 — The Original Instagram Filter?

We (joined by a clip of director Alejandro González Iñárritu) discuss how the film's bleach-bypass color processing gave it a high-contrast, blue-tinted look we associate with early Instagram filters, then pivot into analyzing how tightly framed, claustrophobic shots (including ones apparently filmed from a dog's-eye perspective) reinforce the characters' trapped circumstances, before riffing into a personal tangent about hating photographs shot from generic average-adult-eye-level height.

41:03 — The Dogs Are a Metaphor.

We debate whether Amores Perros' dogs function as heavy-handed but effective metaphors for their owners' suffering (using the scorpion-and-frog fable to explain the "rehabilitated killer" dog), then Robby admits he lost investment when the film jumped between its three interlocking stories, while Jaclynn describes being annoyed by the film's self-conscious stylistic flourishes before deciding that "announcing itself" as a film can still be valid craft, and we praise the movie's gritty, lived-in production detail before Cole starts to argue, through tears he can't fully explain, that the film invented the modern raw, visceral style so many later films have chased.

58:06 — The Craziest Thing About The Story

We marvel incredulously at the film's Daniel storyline, arguing it makes no sense that a character would let a dog starve under his floorboards for days rather than immediately tearing them up to save it, one host suggests this is a deliberate Tell-Tale Heart-style literary allusion rather than a plot hole, and we then play a clip of Iñárritu explaining that the dog-under-the-floor detail was drawn from a real story a friend told him about an abandoned family whose floor had to be broken open after their dog died and started to smell.

0:00 - Can a Movie Ruin a Friendship? (natural: 0:23)

2:12 - Who Brought Amores Perros, and How Do You Describe Amores Perros?

4:33 - Robby Actually Reviews The Film!

7:15 - Amores Perros is NOT a Popular Film! Who Knew?!

8:46 - How Jaclynn Found Out The Film Showed Dog Fighting

17:06 - Dog Training

17:56 - Seeing Amores Perros 20 Years Ago

23:19 - When Were You In or Out for Amores Perros?

27:19 - Audiences Walked Out of the Film

29:06 - The Original Instagram Filter?

41:03 - The Dogs Are a Metaphor.

50:55 - NO ONE ON SET HAD EVER MADE A MOVIE

58:06 - The Craziest Thing About The Story

1:00:11 - FAVORITE LINES

During the fights, no dogs were actually hurt — the animals were simply playing, with their muzzles wrapped in near-invisible fishing line so they physically couldn't bite each other, and the "dead" or "dying" dogs seen on camera were heavily sedated under supervision from Mexico's SPCA. [Source]

To keep any single animal from being sedated too often, the crew actually used several different dogs standing in for what looks like one dog on screen, so that the same dog was not under sedation for more than half an hour and not more than once a day. [Source]

The film's signature look came from Iñárritu and Prieto testing a bleach-bypass film technique years earlier on advertising work, refining it specifically so he could one day use it on the debut feature he was already planning in his head. Iñárritu has said that from the beginning of his experimentation with bleach bypass, he was seeking to create an aesthetic that would capture the spirit of Mexico City. Despite how widely imitated that grainy, desaturated blue look became afterward, Iñárritu and Prieto used the method only once more themselves, for their follow-up feature, 21 Grams (2003). [Source]

The opening car crash that ties all three stories together wasn't a single simple setup — it was captured using nine cameras running at once, including two positioned on rooftops across the street and one hidden inside a trash can. [Source]

Assembling the film's three separate story strands into one coherent whole was such a challenge that it took Iñárritu seven months in the editing room to get the structure right. [Source]

If you want to keep pulling on this thread, a few things are worth your time.

The MUBI Podcast devoted an episode to the film's 25th anniversary, where host Rico Gagliano cruises around Mexico City's sprawl to learn about the local movie industry's history and culture, with help from guests like Gael García Bernal and Eugenio Caballero — it's the rare piece that gets the story straight from the people who made it, including a companion conversation where Gagliano gets the origin story of Amores Perros straight from Iñárritu and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.

For the Spanish-speaking corner of the audience, Cine Aparte con Fernanda Solórzano revisited the film on its 25th anniversary rerelease, with Solórzano discussing why, 25 years later, it remains a cinematic and sensory experience that still fuels discussion. Solórzano's take carries extra weight since she's one of the two critics who wrote the liner notes for the Criterion release.

And on the page rather than in your ears, Juan Villoro's Criterion essay, "The Dogs That Heralded the Millennium", is the single best deep dive on the film's social context — Villoro traces how the movie captures the contradictions of its moment, with some characters aspiring to glamour while others struggle amid distressing poverty and social injustice, and unpacks the title itself, noting that in Spanish, amores perros refers to relationships that are cursed, impossible, and foolish, with perros functioning as an adjective meaning "stubborn" or "dogged," while the dogs themselves embody both the best and worst attributes of the human characters — which is basically the entire argument the show spent an hour making, laid out in a few pages.

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

This episode argues that Airplane isn't a joke machine bolted onto a plot but a plot that never once stops being played straight — the "clothing line" every single joke hangs from — and that's precisely why deadpan dramatic actors, not comedians, were the only people who could have made it work.

Is Airplane! (1980) actually the funniest movie ever made — and does it hold up? In this episode, three hosts break down the disaster-parody classic joke by joke, arguing that its real genius isn't the gags (though by their count there's a new one every 20 seconds) but the fact that it plays a completely straight, lifted-from-a-real-drama plot dead serious underneath all of them. They also dig into which of its dated jokes still land and which ones don't. You don't need to have seen the film to follow along — though you'll probably want to watch it after.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-04.

• Paramount+ (subscription)
• MGM+ (subscription)
• Peacock (Premium tiers)
• Kanopy (free with library card)
• Tubi (free with ads)
• Pluto TV / fuboTV (free with ads)
• Rent or buy: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play

This one's not hiding from you — it's on basically every platform, free tier, paid tier, and rental storefront simultaneously, which feels appropriate for a movie built on the philosophy of throwing every joke technique at the wall at once. If you don't already have a library card for Kanopy, honestly, that's the real crime here — free is free, Shirley.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

Spotify (link needed)

Pocket Casts (link needed)

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Airplane! is the 1980 disaster-movie parody where a traumatized war pilot has to land a passenger jet after everyone in the cockpit gets food poisoning — and where, roughly every twenty seconds for eighty-eight minutes, someone tells a joke. It's the one with "Surely you can't be serious" / "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley." It's the one where the whole ridiculous machine works because the actors — Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, men who'd spent decades playing things dead straight — play it dead straight here too. The dramatic plot is real, and it never wobbles; the film just hangs joke after joke off it like a clothing line. Nearly every comedy that came after it, from Naked Gun to the Farrelly brothers to Family Guy, is standing on this movie's shoulders whether it knows it or not.

We watched it three in a room, laughing harder than usual, and did not fully agree about it — which turned out to be the point. Robby grew up quoting it off a friend's Betamax; it's a foundational text for him. Jaclynn thinks it's a genuine comedy masterclass and also didn't especially like it, because she wants a movie to take her somewhere darker than "here is a joke, here is another joke." Cole spent the entire episode confidently insisting it was a 1976 Mel Brooks film and a sequel to Blazing Saddles, which it is none of — a bit he committed to so thoroughly that when his own landlord (an MIT-and-Wharton-educated woman) correctly told him three guys from Wisconsin actually wrote it, he decided she must be wrong.

So somewhere between counting the jokes (a minimum of 264, we did the math), arguing about whether the film's uglier gags are punching at something or just punching, and Robby quoting himself quoting Seth Rogen on why comedy has to live a little outside of proper society, we ended up talking less about whether Airplane! is funny — it is — and more about what it actually takes to make something look this easy. Turns out it takes a lot, and turns out you can spend two hours finding that out and still keep looking at Dad for approval afterward.

04:47 — Robby Actually Reviews The Film!

Robby, Cole, and Jaclynn drift from talk about how Robby's friend and his tough Michigan girlfriend will react to the podcast into a long tangent about Jaclynn's road trip through Detroit and the Upper Peninsula, then troubleshoot mic/recording noise issues with jokes about head-mounted mic gear, before circling back to note that Robby (with his friend Sean) grew up watching and quoting this movie constantly.

13:34 — DID JACLYNN NOT LIKE AIRPLANE???

Cole, Robby, and Jaclynn get sidetracked joking about casting Allison Williams in a hypothetical remake before untangling a mixed-up back-and-forth over who's supposed to answer the question of what they knew going into Airplane, eventually landing on Robby's take that the film works because its jokes grow directly out of a genuinely earnest story (which is what influenced comedians like Seth MacFarlane and Adam McKay), while Jaclynn admits she thought she'd seen the movie before but realizes she'd only ever caught its most famous clips.

17:24 — Airplane! is a remake? A parody? No?!?!

Jaclynn and Cole compare Airplane!'s serious plot to a "clothing line" that jokes hang on, estimate the film has at least 250 jokes (maybe closer to 480), and Jaclynn recalls specific gags she already knew before seeing the movie—like the inflatable autopilot and "don't call me Shirley"—which leads her into a tangent about how the nun/boy reading joke reminded her of the Australian comedy show Danger 5.

19:36 — It's a Dramatic Movie!

Cole and Robby recommend other spoof comedies like Danger 5 and Inspector Ike as similar in style, then Jaclynn brings up how Airplane's influence shows up in later memes, describing the recurring gif of a woman being repeatedly slapped harder each year as a joke about escalating chaos.

23:30 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Also Makes Fun of Cole

Robby, Cole, and Jaclynn go back and forth on their differing reactions to Airplane, with Jaclynn admitting she prefers darker, more emotionally complex stories over pure comedy while Robby and Cole push back and needle each other about it, before the three debate whether the film's uncomfortable jokes—especially a running pedophilia gag and moments of misogyny and racial humor—work as self-aware satire or just haven't aged well.

34:29 — Problematic? Not Sooo Much

Cole tells a story about his highly educated landlord insisting Airplane was written by three people from her Wisconsin hometown, which Cole wrongly took as confirmation of his mistaken belief that it's a Mel Brooks movie, and Robby and Jaclynn tease him for not questioning his own error and for dismissing her correct expertise, while also comparing the film's influence to later comedies like Hot Shots and The Naked Gun.

43:11 — Dad Explains Post-Modernism Bit

The three hosts riff on a shared bit of dialogue with lots of overlapping repetition, then veer into a tangent about Alex Jones and InfoWars being bought by The Onion, before settling into a discussion of whether each of them stayed awake through Airplane and how they personally rate it as a comedy versus a drama with jokes layered on top.

53:17 — The Meanest Joke Ever?

Cole, Robby, and Jaclynn go back and forth on whether a joke in the film still lands today, joking about the characters' Jewish identity, and Jaclynn says her real complaint about the "Air Israel beard" joke isn't that it's offensive but that it was shot too cheaply to do the joke justice, a point Cole then repeats back word for word.

0:00 - Can a Movie Ruin a Friendship? (natural: 0:23)

4:47 - Robby Actually Reviews The Film!

9:30 - FUNNIEST MOVIE EVER MADE

11:05 - WHAT JACLYNN KNEW GOING IN

13:34 - DID JACLYNN NOT LIKE AIRPLANE???

17:24 - Airplane! is a remake? A parody? No?!?!

19:36 - It's a Dramatic Movie!

20:46 - Unhinged Mel Brooks Bit

23:30 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Also Makes Fun of Cole

29:00 - Why Robby Loved The Film This Time Around

30:52 - When Was Cole In or Out?

34:29 - Problematic? Not Sooo Much

43:11 - Dad Explains Post-Modernism Bit

53:17 - The Meanest Joke Ever?

53:58 - Jaclynn Flies a Plane

Directors (co-directed, also co-writers) — "ZAZ":

- David Zucker — also known for co-creating The Naked Gun franchise, and directing The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), Ruthless People (1986), and BASEketball (1998).

- Jerry Zucker — went on to direct Ghost (1990) and First Knight (1995).

- Jim Abrahams — later co-created Top Secret! and the Naked Gun series with the Zuckers.

Screenwriters: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, adapting Zero Hour! (1957), credited to Hall Bartlett and John C. Champion.

Producers:

- Jon Davison (Producer) — also RoboCop (1987), Starship Troopers (1997), The 6th Day (2000).

- Howard W. Koch (Executive Producer) — also The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Odd Couple (1968), Ghost (1990).

Cinematographer: Joseph F. Biroc — won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Towering Inferno (1974); also shot It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Blazing Saddles (1974).

Composer: Elmer Bernstein — also The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Escape, Animal House (1978), Ghostbusters (1984).

• Robert Hays as Ted Striker — also Take This Job and Shove It (1981), Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), Starman (1986-87).
• Julie Hagerty as Elaine Dickinson — also Lost in America (1985), What About Bob? (1991), Marriage Story (2019).
• Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Rumack — also the Naked Gun trilogy, Forbidden Planet (1956).
• Robert Stack as Captain Rex Kramer — also The Untouchables (TV), Unsolved Mysteries (host), The High and the Mighty (1954).
• Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey — also Sea Hunt (TV).
• Peter Graves as Captain Clarence Oveur — also Mission: Impossible (TV), Stalag 17.
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as Roger Murdock — the co-pilot, playing a spoof of himself. At the time of filming, the L.A. Lakers legend was still mid-career when he signed on for the role.

• WGA Award, Best Adapted Screenplay (1981) — WIN
• Golden Globe Award, Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (1981) — NOMINATION
• BAFTA Award, Best Screenplay — NOMINATION
• National Film Registry (Library of Congress) — inducted 2010

No Academy Award nominations or wins.

Airplane! is a parody based on the 1957 film Zero Hour!, from which it borrows the plot, central characters, and some dialogue nearly verbatim. Zero Hour! (1957) — Wikipedia

This episode argues that Back to the Future's whole plot is smuggled into the audience's lap before Marty's face even appears onscreen, you get literally the whole film encapsulated in one shot.

We revisit Back to the Future (1985) — and discover, mid-recording, that half the room has never actually seen it. Robby comes in ready to argue it's "the most perfect movie ever made," while Jaclynn realizes she'd spent years confusing it with a Huey Lewis jukebox musical. It's a close, funny look at why the film's opening ten minutes might be the tightest piece of screenwriting in blockbuster history — no prior viewing (or memory of viewing) required.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-04.

Sources conflict a bit on the exact home platform (some say Netflix, some Peacock, some neither), but rental/purchase options across Amazon, Apple TV, and others are consistently confirmed.

Where to watch:

- Rent or buy: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Fandango at Home, YouTube

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

Spotify (link needed)

Pocket Casts (link needed)

RSS

Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Back to the Future (1985) is the one where a kid named Marty McFly accidentally rides Doc Brown's plutonium-powered DeLorean back to 1955, nearly erases himself from existence by getting between his teenage parents, and has to engineer them into falling in love before he fades out of the family photo. It's the movie Carl Sagan reportedly called the most accurate depiction of theoretical time travel he'd ever seen, and its opening two minutes — clocks ticking before you see anything, a coffee pot that never fills, dog food piling up, a skateboard rolling past the missing plutonium — quietly contain the entire film before a single face appears on screen. We spend a good while on exactly that sequence, because once you notice the burnt toast toasting itself over and over, you can't un-notice it.

Here's the thing this episode is actually about, though. We committed to watching the trilogy out of order — you can't watch Part II without first watching the original, so obviously we started with the original — and somewhere in the first two hours Jaclynn realized she had never actually seen this movie. She was certain she had. She'd talked about it at parties. She thought she and Cole had seen it together on Broadway (that was The Heart of Rock and Roll; different Huey Lewis entirely). Robby, meanwhile, has this film memorized across formats and cable-TV reruns and arrives with a prepared list of controversial takes and unilateral decisions about which franchises you're allowed to watch out of order — which is how the episode opens with Jaclynn sarcastically welcoming everyone to "Robby's solo podcast on Back to the Future."

So this is less a review than three people watching a beloved classic more seriously than anyone has in years — Robby cataloging every format he's seen it on, Jaclynn coming out of what she describes as an amnesia coma, and Dad bringing a movie he then admits he's never technically watched, right before delivering the Carl Sagan–was-a-Cornell-scientist fact he was clearly saving. If you've never seen Back to the Future, you'll leave knowing why its clockwork screenplay still holds up. If you've seen it a hundred times on cable, you may want to double-check that you actually have.

• Robert Zemeckis — Director — also: Back to the Future (1985), Forrest Gump (1994), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Robert Zemeckis — Screenwriter — also: Back to the Future (1985), Romancing the Stone (1984), 1941 (1979)
• Bob Gale — Screenwriter — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Bob Gale — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985)
• Neil Canton — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Steven Spielberg — Executive Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Jurassic Park (1993)
• Kathleen Kennedy — Executive Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985)
• Frank Marshall — Executive Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985)
• Dean Cundey — Cinematographer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Romancing the Stone (1984), Jurassic Park (1993)
• Alan Silvestri — Composer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Forrest Gump (1994), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

• Michael J. Fox — Marty McFly — also: Family Ties (1982), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Spin City (1996)
• Christopher Lloyd — Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown — also: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Taxi (1978), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Lea Thompson — Lorraine Baines McFly — also: Red Dawn (1984), Howard the Duck (1986), Switched at Birth (2011)
• Crispin Glover — George McFly — also: Willard (2003), Charlie's Angels (2000), Alice in Wonderland (2010)
• Thomas F. Wilson — Biff Tannen — also: Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Freaks and Geeks (1999)
• Claudia Wells — Jennifer Parker — also: Back to the Future (1985)
• Marc McClure — Dave McFly — also: Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), Freaky Friday (1976)
• Wendie Jo Sperber — Linda McFly — also: Bosom Buddies (1980), Undercover Angel (1988)
• James Tolkan — Mr. Strickland — also: Top Gun (1986), WarGames (1983)
• George DiCenzo — Sam Baines — also: Murder, She Wrote (1984), Law & Order (1990), NYPD Blue (1993)
• Harry Waters Jr. — Marvin Berry — also: Back to the Future (1985)
• Billy Zane — Match — also: Titanic (1997), Dead Calm (1989)

Academy Awards (Oscars)

- Best Sound Effects Editing — WIN At the 1986 Academy Awards, Back to the Future received one award for Best Sound Effects Editing (Charles L. Campbell and Robert Rutledge).

- Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION Best Original Screenplay (Gale and Zemeckis)

- Best Sound (Mixing) — NOMINATION Best Sound (Bill Varney, B. Tennyson Sebastian II, Robert Thirlwell, and William B. Kaplan)

- Best Original Song ("The Power of Love") — NOMINATION Best Original Song ("The Power of Love")

Golden Globe Awards (43rd, 1986)

- Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy — NOMINATION

- Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Michael J. Fox) — NOMINATION

- Best Screenplay — NOMINATION

- Best Original Song ("The Power of Love") — NOMINATION

Back to the Future received four nominations at the 43rd Golden Globe Awards, for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) (Fox), Best Original Song ("The Power of Love"), and Best Screenplay (Gale and Zemeckis).

BAFTA Awards (39th, 1986)

- Best Film — NOMINATION

- Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION

- Best Editing — NOMINATION

- Best Production Design — NOMINATION

- Best Special Visual Effects — NOMINATION

At the 39th British Academy Film Awards, Back to the Future received five nominations, including Best Film, Best Original Screenplay (Gale and Zemeckis), Best Visual Effects (Pike and Ralston), Best Production Design (Paull), and Best Editing (Schmidt and Keramidas).

Writers Guild of America Awards

- Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION Writers Guild Awards (WGA) - Movies from 1985 · nom. Best Original Screenplay (Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale)

National Board of Review

- Top Ten Films — WIN/RECOGNITION NBR (National Board of Review) - Awards for 1985 · nom. Top Ten Films

Saturn Awards (13th, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films)

- Best Science Fiction Film — WIN

- Best Actor (Michael J. Fox) — WIN

- Best Special Effects — WIN

- Best Director (Robert Zemeckis) — NOMINATION

- Best Supporting Actress (Lea Thompson) — NOMINATION

At the 13th Saturn Awards, the film won three awards: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actor (Fox), and Best Special Effects (Pike).

Hugo Award

- Best Dramatic Presentation — WIN It also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

David di Donatello Awards (Italy)

- Best Foreign Screenplay — WIN

- Best Foreign Producer (Steven Spielberg) — WIN

Back to the Future performed well internationally: it won Best Foreign Producer (Spielberg) and Best Foreign Screenplay at the David di Donatello awards (Italy)

Japan Academy Prize

- Outstanding Foreign Language Film — WIN Outstanding Foreign Film from the Japan Academy

People's Choice Awards

- Favorite Motion Picture — WIN The film was also named Favorite Motion Picture at the 12th People's Choice Awards.

National Film Registry

- Selected for Preservation — HONOR (non-competitive) In 2007, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Note: The National Film Registry entry is a preservation honor, not a competitive award — included here for completeness since it's a notable ceremony/body you asked about, but it's not a "win" or "nomination" in the competitive sense.

Here are five confirmed, specific production trivia items about Back to the Future (1985) — the kind that change how you understand the film:

1. Eric Stoltz was fired six weeks into filming for being too good at drama.

This isn't just a casting footnote — it reveals how precisely calibrated the film's tone is. Stoltz played Marty as a method actor, insisting on being called "Marty" by the crew even off-camera, and at a table read he reportedly said, "Everybody's laughing, but it's not a comedy, it's a tragedy," adding "My whole family remembers a different history to what I do. It's really very sad." Zemeckis concluded the dramatic approach was actively ruining the film's comedic engine, and Zemeckis has since called firing Stoltz "the worst moment of my career." This directly validates the episode's "Eric Stoltz = overly serious actor" bit — it's rooted in a real, documented on-set clash over tone.

2. Fox was living a double life during the entire shoot.

After being recast, Fox was filming both Family Ties and Back to the Future at the same time — filming Family Ties in the morning, then heading to Back to the Future at night until 3 or 4 a.m. Fox himself later admitted the exhaustion bled into the performance: "I was running on adrenaline. I barely knew where I was and I didn't really know what I was doing. That served the film, because Marty's supposed to be disoriented."

3. The entire third act — plutonium heist and all — was a late rewrite; the original climax was a nuclear test site, not a lightning storm.

Marty and Doc originally had a completely different plan involving a break-in at a nuclear power plant to steal plutonium, rather than the lightning-bolt clock tower sequence. They even briefly considered writing in a nuclear explosion that would wipe out the surrounding city, an idea abandoned due to its massive cost. This means the now-iconic clock tower climax — which the podcast praises as foreshadowed from frame one — was a structural rewrite, not the original design.

4. The time machine wasn't always the DeLorean — it was originally a refrigerator.

Before writers Gale and Zemeckis decided to turn the time machine into a vehicle, they considered making it a refrigerator. Universal later tried to change the car anyway: Universal was offered $40,000 to change the time machine from a DeLorean to a Ford Mustang, which Gale flatly refused.

5. The film's title itself was almost sabotaged by the studio, and Spielberg personally intervened.

The original title was "Spaceman From Pluto," until producer Steven Spielberg stepped in and shut that down. The script's road to production was also brutal: the script for Back to the Future was rejected by studios 44 times, with Columbia calling it "too sweet," Universal saying "time travel movies don't make any money," and Disney calling it "too incestuous."

Since Back to the Future, Zemeckis and Gale haven't written another film together — Gale and Zemeckis haven't collaborated on any new material after the Future trilogy wrapped up, though they still work together on spinoff media, including the musical adaptation that debuted in the UK in 2020. Gale has been vocal that a fourth Back to the Future film isn't happening, instead pointing to the stage version: "We made three terrific movies and people kept asking for more Back to the Future. So we made Back to the Future: The Musical … We're taking it around the world."

Zemeckis, meanwhile, has kept directing solo. His most notable recent film is Here (2024), reuniting him with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright — a drama produced and directed by Zemeckis, co-written with Eric Roth from Richard McGuire's graphic novel, using a single locked-down camera shot across generations, with digital de-aging applied to the cast. It was the sixth collaboration between Zemeckis and Hanks. He's since moved on to a new project: Jennifer Lopez will star in Netflix's adaptation of "The Last Mrs. Parrish," with Zemeckis set to direct — a psychological thriller about a con-artist who targets a wealthy couple, infiltrating them by befriending the wife and seducing the husband.

Here are a few resources for listeners who want to go deeper on Back to the Future (1985):

1. (sub)Text: "Time and Taboo in Back to the Future" — A philosophy-and-literature podcast episode where Wes Alwan and Erin O'Luanaigh discuss the 1985 film and how securing the provisions for one's own future depends on two modes of confrontation, exploring life's big questions through a close reading of the film. It's a good pick for listeners who want a more philosophical, thematic take beyond the "perfectly written" craft angle this episode focuses on. (https://subtextpodcast.com/back-to-the-future-zemeckis-1985/)
2. The Script Lab's plot-point breakdown of Back to the Future — A structural essay that walks through how the young Doc Brown of 1955 agrees to help Marty get back to 1985, and how Marty's disruption of the timeline causes his siblings to start vanishing from a photograph, useful for listeners who want a scene-by-scene companion to the episode's discussion of the film's tight plotting. (https://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/five-plot-point-breakdowns/1038-back-to-the-future-1985/)
3. Arc Studio Blog's screenplay breakdown — This essay applies the "Save the Cat" beat-structure framework to the film, noting that the opening image is a ticking clock and a series of pendulums fixed at 5 minutes to 8 o'clock, symbolizing that we have the power to change our future at any moment — a nice complement to the episode's own extended breakdown of the film's clock-filled cold open. (https://www.arcstudiopro.com/blog/back-to-the-future-screenplay-breakdown)

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

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The real argument here is that the stage play and the TV show only look like the same story wearing two outfits, when they're actually two different animals entirely — one built to survive a guinea pig's murder in a way the other never could.

It's not quite "a very special episode," but something about this one feels much more personal, but also there is a Chekhov's Gun dance break so don't take it too seriously, please.

A filmed version of the Fleabag stage play was broadcast by the National Theatre UK and Amazon, but these days you have to search something like "Fleabag National Theatre Live (Phoebe Waller-Bridge 2019)" and read a little bit of very obvious Russian. For instance "Видео" means video.

Before it was a TV show, Fleabag was a one-woman play — and on this episode of The Arc, the hosts dig into why the two are actually different animals, not just different formats of the same story. That means a long, close look at the guinea pig's death, the bank manager framing device, and the character of Boo, plus the real backstory of how Phoebe Waller-Bridge and director Vicky Jones built the show from scratch. If you love Fleabag, or you've just always wondered what got cut for TV, this is the episode.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.

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Fleabag exists in three forms, and this episode is about the friction between two of them: Phoebe Waller-Bridge's original one-woman stage play, where a woman sits in a chair and does not get up, and the BBC television series most people mean when they say the name. We spent this one on the stage show — the raw thing, the version where the guinea pig gets killed by human hands and the BBC would later say, no, that's not television. If you've only seen the show, you may not know Hillary the guinea pig ever died at all. Jaclynn, who watched the play three times from the second row (close enough, she'll tell you, to have reached out and touched Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and who chose those seats specifically to stare the performer down), forgets it happens every single time.

That forgetting turns out to be the whole argument. On stage there's no literal guinea pig — just Fleabag cradling a fistful of air until "the chattering stops, everything is quiet and she is safe" — so the killing stops being about a guinea pig almost immediately and becomes about grief nobody's processing, a friendship that's already dead, the last thing she loved. Cole makes the case that the guinea pig is a Chekhov's gun that has to go off, that in the play everything is dead and dead, and that on television, surrounded by a cafe wall of guinea pig photos, all you'd be left with is she killed an animal with her bare hands. The three of us don't fully agree — there's a running disagreement about whether Boo's death is a death or, as Cole puts it, "literary murder" — and the not-agreeing is the point.

Jaclynn found this whole thing by accident, going down a rabbit hole looking for a different show entirely, and watched season one hundreds of times through two bottles of Prosecco a night before she got sober in 2019 and finally saw the ending clearly; Robby, on record, spends a good stretch of this episode being deeply uncomfortable, which he insists is great. You don't need to have seen the play — you almost certainly haven't; it's the version that got mislabeled in 2013 as a show about porn's effect on modern women when it's really just a woman living her life, sometimes having sex, mostly grieving. Stay for the part where we forget how it ends, remember we went out afterward and got served ants, and then spend a full minute arguing about whether they were ants or Chipotle-marinated grasshoppers.

• Phoebe Waller-Bridge — Screenwriter — also: Fleabag (2019), Killing Eve (2018), Crashing (2016)
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge — Producer — also: Fleabag (2019)
• Vicky Jones — Director — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019), Run (2020)
• Tony Grech-Smith — Director — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Megan Ellison — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Sue Naegle — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Dawn Davis — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Skye Optican — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Francesca Moody — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Kevin Emrick — Producer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)
• Isobel Waller-Bridge — Composer/Sound Designer — also: National Theatre Live: Fleabag (2019)

• Phoebe Waller-Bridge — Fleabag — also: Fleabag (2016), Killing Eve (2018), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

This episode is specifically about the stage play ("Fleabag: The Original Play"), not the TV series — so I'll focus on the play's own awards history, separate from the TV show's Emmy/BAFTA/Golden Globe wins (which belong to the television adaptation, a different work).

Here is the awards history for Fleabag: The Original Play (the stage show):

• Scotsman Fringe First Award — WIN (2013)
• The Stage Award for Best Solo Performer — WIN (2013)
• Off West End Theatre Award ("Offie") for Most Promising New Playwright — WIN (2013)
• Off West End Theatre Award ("Offie") for Best Female Performance — WIN (2013)
• Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright — WIN (2013)
• Susan Smith Blackburn Prize — NOMINATION (Special Commendation)
• Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre — NOMINATION (2014)
• Evening Standard Award for Most Promising New Playwright — NOMINATION (Finalist)
• Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show — WIN (2019, off-Broadway/New York run)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance — NOMINATION (2019)
• Drama League Award, Distinguished Performance Award — WIN (2019)
• Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance — WIN (2019)
• Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress — NOMINATION (2020, for the West End revival at Wyndham's Theatre)

The play won the Scotsman Fringe First Award, was given a special commendation for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2014, plus Best Entertainment or Comedy Play and Best Actress nominations at the 2020 Oliviers, alongside wins for The Stage Best Solo Performer, an Offie for Most Promising New Playwright, an Offie for Best Female Performance, the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show during its 2019 New York run. Waller-Bridge landed a Best Actress nomination for the 2020 Olivier Awards for the show's return to the West End, and the New York transfer also brought nominations/wins including the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, the Drama League's Distinguished Performance Award, the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance, and an Evening Standard Award nomination for Most Promising Playwright.

Note: the play itself was not eligible for and did not receive Academy Award, BAFTA Film, Golden Globe, WGA, or DGA recognition — those bodies honor film/TV, not stage plays. The numerous Emmy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA TV wins associated with "Fleabag" belong to the separate television adaptation, not this original stage production.

the Kickstarter origins, BBC's refusal of the guinea pig scene, and the Fringe First award/interview details.Here's a set of confirmed, specific production trivia items about Fleabag: The Original Play:

1. The BBC required the guinea pig to survive on TV — unlike the play, where Fleabag kills it. In the original stage version, Fleabag crushes her injured guinea pig Hilary to death by hand after "Tube Rodent" (called "Bus Rodent" in the TV version) kicks it, but when the BBC commissioned the series, one condition was that unlike the original stage play, the series couldn't kill off Hilary the guinea pig at the end, and Waller-Bridge admits this was probably a good call. [Source]
2. The whole show began as a dare, not a planned project. Fleabag began as a dare: in 2012, Phoebe's friend the comedian Deborah Frances-White, now host of the Guilty Feminist podcast, was organising a stand-up night as part of the London Storytelling Festival, and challenged Phoebe to write a 10-minute piece. That kernel later grew into the full stage show. [Source]
3. The production was crowdfunded and the team lived in cramped conditions to bring it to Edinburgh. For the 2013 Fringe run, "We fundraised with a Kickstarter, packed our bags, slept eight people in a two-bed flat and crossed our fingers that people would come to see what we had made," Waller-Bridge later recalled. The Kickstarter campaign itself was launched to raise £3,955 for the production of a Waller-Bridge-led one-woman show directed by Jones and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (https://www.edfringe.com/about-us/news-and-blog/phoebe-waller-bridge-and-fleabag-at-the-fringe-10-years-on/, https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/how-fleabag-got-made-70994/)
4. The job-interview framing device from the play was replaced by a bank-loan interview in the TV show so the failing café could be saved rather than shuttered — the play follows the last three days leading up to the cafe closing, with a framing device of the newly unemployed Fleabag attending a job interview after this has happened, while in the series, the job interview was replaced with the loan application interview, allowing the cafe to be rescued after all, and extended into Series 2, where the cafe has actually become quite successful. [Source]
5. Real guinea pigs were cast for the TV series based on their resemblance to celebrities. For the on-screen adaptation, Waller-Bridge talked about casting real guinea pigs for the TV adaptation of the play, which involved selecting the furry creatures based on their celebrity look-a-likes like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone. [Source]

Since Fleabag, Vicky Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge's paths have mostly diverged. Jones wrote and created the HBO series Run (2020), and before that wrote an episode of Killing Eve and script-edited the Fleabag TV adaptation — her most substantial post-Fleabag credit as a solo creator remains Run. Waller-Bridge, meanwhile, has stayed busy on screen and off: she appeared as Helena Shaw in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, released in June 2023, appeared in John Krasinski's fantasy film IF alongside Ryan Reynolds, and is narrating and producing a two-part octopus documentary titled Octopus!, set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video. She's also attached to write and executive produce a Tomb Raider series for Prime Video, though that project has had a bumpy road — she's writing all the episodes, with a co-showrunner and director now brought on to help steer it toward a start of filming.

Given the show's format (one film/work per episode), the most fitting, fully-confirmed standalone title is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Tease line: We haven't covered Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yet — but we probably should.

Based on documented, named-source reviews of the Fleabag stage play, here are confirmed quotes from critics (not the cast/crew):

• "One of the great qualities of the writing in both this play and the subsequent TV series is the way it leads us into laughing at things that are quite shocking or reprehensible and then pulls the rug from under us" — theatre.reviews critic, Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag filmed live on stage – review [Source]

This critic called the play "a master class in constructing and writing a script," noting how it "leads us into laughing at things that are quite shocking or reprehensible and then" pulls back.

• "What centers Waller-Bridge's show is not only her razor-sharp wit, and her gift for narrative and comedic surprise, but also her performance" — Thom Geier, TheWrap [Source]

Thom Geier of TheWrap wrote that "What centers Waller-Bridge's show is not only her razor-sharp wit, and her gift for narrative and comedic surprise, but also her performance."

• "If this Fleabag sometimes feels a little like it's all happening in air quotes, it's still a brisk... clever, and indisputably engaging evening of theater" — Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly [Source]

Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "If this Fleabag sometimes feels a little like it's all happening in air quotes, it's still a brisk (only 65 minutes!), clever, and indisputably engaging evening of theater, performed at a level of intimacy that most Phoebe Waller-Bridge fans - now legion - can only dream of in 2019."

• "In 2016 it was turned into a wildly successful and 'utterly riveting'" TV series — The Guardian, as quoted on Goodreads [Source]

The published edition of the play notes it "In 2016 it was turned into a wildly successful and 'utterly riveting' (Guardian) BBC television series."

Here are a few resources that go deeper on this specific piece of work — the original one-woman Fleabag stage play and its relationship to the TV series:

1. "Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag(s): direct address and narrative control from stage to small screen" (Journal of International Women's Studies, Bridgewater State University) — this academic essay explores how the TV series owes its mode of direct address to the original one-woman stage monologue, applying auteur theory to the show's use of direct address and its relationship to feminist content. Worth a read for listeners who want a scholarly deep-dive into why the fourth-wall-breaking device works the way it does across both formats.
2. "This Scene in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Original Play Never Made it Into 'Fleabag' (Thankfully)" (Collider) — this essay focuses specifically on the guinea pig's death as "the darkest omission from the one-woman show" and argues that Fleabag's escalating bad acts, including killing a guinea pig, mean she doesn't really earn a traditional happy ending, making it a good companion read to the episode's own extended discussion of that scene.
3. "Fleabag: How The Original Stage Play Is Different To The TV Show (Is It Better?)" (Screen Rant) — this piece walks through the character-by-character differences between play and show, including a detailed look at the Joe character, whom Waller-Bridge describes as "a proper cockney geezer" with a "joy that slaps you in the face," an elderly, loyal cafe customer absent from the TV series, making it a solid companion piece for listeners curious about exactly which elements got cut or redistributed.

There will Consider starting from the beginning — Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.

Our argument is that Freaky Friday has "so much plot, no story" — and that its real, unplanned achievement isn't the mother-daughter reckoning it announces but the sibling truce it never bothers to take credit for.

On The Arc, three hosts finally watch the original 1976 Freaky Friday — the Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster body-swap comedy that started it all — to complete a franchise arc they'd accidentally done backwards. They dig into Jodie Foster filming this the same year as Taxi Driver, Barbara Harris's Second City roots, and why the film has "so much plot, no story." If you've ever wondered whether a candy-colored Disney comedy from 1976 has anything to say about feminism, nostalgia, or driving with your eyes closed, this is the episode.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-04.

1. Where to watch Freaky Friday (1976):

- Disney+ (streaming with subscription) — https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-d2969b02-9276-4625-b718-1406382986b3

- Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy) — https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Freaky-Friday-1976/0OFN8X2HDOCSCFOU9UJRQ3XKFG

- Apple TV (rent or buy)

- Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

Confirmed via "Watch Freaky Friday with a subscription on Disney+, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home" and "Currently you are able to watch 'Freaky Friday' streaming on Disney Plus... It is also possible to buy 'Freaky Friday' on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home as download or rent it on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home online."

No surprises here — the original tucks in neatly on Disney+ right alongside its own sequels, which is honestly the least chaotic thing about this franchise's release history.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

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Freaky Friday (1976) is the Disney body-swap comedy where a mother and daughter — Barbara Harris and a very young Jodie Foster — wish, at the exact same moment, that they could switch places, and then do. It's the original: the movie that came before the Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis remake most people picture, before the musical, before Freakier Friday, based on a 1976 novel and, if you go looking, part of a much longer body-swap lineage that reaches back to a 1931 novel and an 1882 one before that. It's also the reason Jodie Foster wasn't Princess Leia — she was under contract to Disney to finish this and Candleshoe the same year she filmed Taxi Driver, which is either a delightful fun fact or the single most jarring double bill in her career, depending on how you feel about watching her play a luminous teenager and then refusing to believe it's the same actress.

We came to it out of order, on purpose — we'd already done the remakes and worked our way backward — and Jaclynn walked in ready to study it like an intellectual, hunting for depth of meaning and Freytag's Pyramid, before the movie gently informed her it was cotton candy that had told her exactly what it was up front. So this is the episode where we argue about whether a series of hijinks with no real arc counts as a story (Cole's verdict: one straight line, so much plot and no story), where Robby fell for the body doubles so completely he'll go to his grave insisting Barbara Harris did her own skateboarding, and where the whole thing detours — as these things do — through 1970s emergent feminism, a genuinely sharp "male chauvinist pig" monologue, the disquieting amount of the word "daddy," and a full accounting of why none of us will let Cole drive.

If you've never seen the film, none of that requires you to. If you have, we'd bet you've never watched it argued over by three improvisers who treat a Disney comedy with the same seriousness they'd bring to Lynch, land on the one genuinely tender thing it's actually doing — that the mother and daughter learn less about each other than about themselves — and then immediately ruin the moment. Jaclynn ironically loves it. Dad found the whole thing dumb and was, against his will, charmed anyway.

• Gary Nelson — Director — also: Freaky Friday (1976), The Black Hole (1979), Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977)
• Mary Rodgers — Screenwriter — also: Freaky Friday (1976)
• Ron Miller — Producer — also: Freaky Friday (1976), The Black Hole (1979), Pete's Dragon (1977)
• Tom Leetch — Producer — also: Freaky Friday (1976), The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Snowball Express (1972)
• Charles F. Wheeler — Cinematographer — also: Freaky Friday (1976)
• Johnny Mandel — Composer — also: Freaky Friday (1976)

• Jodie Foster and Patsy Kelly info needed.Barbara Harris — Ellen Andrews — also: Nashville (1975), Family Plot (1976), A Thousand Clowns (1965)
• Jodie Foster — Annabel Andrews — also: Taxi Driver (1976), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Contact (1997)
• John Astin — Mr. Andrews — also: The Addams Family (1964), West Side Story (1961), The Frighteners (1996)
• Patsy Kelly — Mrs. Schmauss — also: Rosemary's Baby (1968), Pigskin Parade (1936), The North Avenue Irregulars (1979)
• Dick Van Patten — Mr. Joffert — also: Eight Is Enough (1977)

### Golden Globe Awards (34th Golden Globe Awards, 1977)

- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Jodie Foster) — NOMINATION

- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Barbara Harris) — NOMINATION

- Best Original Song ("I'd Like to Be You for a Day") — NOMINATION

At the 34th Golden Globe Awards, it received three nominations: Best Actress – Comedy or Musical (for both Foster and Harris), and Best Original Song ("I'd Like to Be You for a Day").

### Academy Awards

The film received no nominations, though both Foster & Harris (and the Original Song "I'd Like to Be You for a Day") were nominated for Golden Globes, so it was relatively close to inclusion.

### Other Major Ceremonies (BAFTA, Writers Guild, Directors Guild, National Film Registry, major festivals)

No wins or nominations from these bodies turned up in the search results for this film.

Summary: Freaky Friday (1976)'s formal competitive awards recognition is limited essentially to its three Golden Globe nominations (two for Best Actress – Musical/Comedy, one for Best Original Song), with no wins and no Oscar or other major-ceremony recognition.

The 1976 Freaky Friday film is based on Mary Rodgers' 1972 novel of the same name, with the screenplay also written by Rodgers herself, telling the story of 13-year-old Annabel Andrews and her mother, Ellen, who switch bodies for a single day following an argument, leading to a series of comedic mishaps as each navigates the other's responsibilities.

Source novel: Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers – Wikipedia

Bookshop.org search: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Freaky%20Friday

1. Jodie Foster was almost Princess Leia — but her Disney contract blocked it. Jodie Foster was offered the Princess Leia role in Star Wars: Episode IV around the time this movie was in development, when George Lucas wanted to make the character younger, but it was realized that Foster was still under contract to Disney. There may have been a way for Foster to get out of the contract, but her mother decided to honor it, so Foster completed the film as planned. [Source]
2. Neither lead actress actually water-skied — the film's signature stunt was smoke and mirrors. Neither Barbara Harris nor Jodie Foster did any actual water skiing in the film; in both cases, these scenes were achieved with the use of professional water skiers in long shot on location, and cutaway shots of the actresses in front of a rear projection effect. However, Foster did play field hockey in the film herself. [Source])
3. Foster shot this and Taxi Driver in the same year — a fact Disney's publicity conveniently ignored. She made Freaky Friday the same year that she made Taxi Driver, which the PR people at Buena Vista presumably did not mention. [Source]
4. Debra Winger auditioned for the lead role that went to Foster. Debra Winger auditioned for the role of Annabel Andrews, which ultimately went to Jodie Foster. [Source])
5. The film's police-car chase used genuine practical effects, not just camera tricks. The chases employed the skills of the Disney special effects people and are amazing: police cars are sliced in half, drive on two wheels, and change shapes as they race across footbridges and into the Los Angeles sewer system. [Source]

Here's what turned up on their subsequent work:

Gary Nelson went on to direct Disney's "The Black Hole," a rousing sci-fi adventure, following Freaky Friday. He largely stayed in television afterward — directing many television movies, including Murder in Coweta County starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith — and in the '80s returned to television almost exclusively, working on law-enforcement shows such as "Lady Blue," "Boys in Blue," and "Revolver." Nelson passed away in 2022.

Mary Rodgers continued expanding the Freaky Friday universe with two book sequels — A Billion for Boris (1974), where Annabel and her friend discover a TV that tunes into future broadcasts, and Summer Switch (1982), where Annabel's brother and father swap bodies. She also wrote the Broadway hit Once Upon a Mattress, which made Carol Burnett a star, and later saw a 1996 revival starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Decades later, her original story kept generating new adaptations, including a 2003 cinema remake with a screenplay by Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon, followed by a 2025 sequel from Elyse Hollander and Jordan Weiss, both based on Rodgers' book.

---

FAMOUS QUOTES

Based on documented critic reviews found in my search, here are confirmable quotes from named critics discussing the 1976 Freaky Friday:

• "The problems resulting from the switch of identities are fairly predictable, but fun: This is one of the better recent Disney productions." — Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com [Source]
• "Now Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster think to themselves in each other's voices and talk in their own, which is better than being either Dean Jones or a dog, but not much." — Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com [Source]
• "Barbara Harris has always played a sort of absent-minded little girl lost. Jodie Foster, in films like 'Bugsy Malone' and 'Taxi Driver', has shown the level-headed maturity of a much older person. And so, when we see Harris as her daughter and Foster as her mother, we believe it, because in some undefinable way having nothing to do with chronological age, Jodie Foster IS older than Barbara Harris." — Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com [Source]
• "Toward the end there are some amusing car-chase scenes. Elsewhere the humor is clotted by the feeling that the jokes are chasing the reactions, instead of the other way around." — Richard Eder, The New York Times (via Wikipedia summary, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaky_Friday_(1976_film))
• "do a serviceable job with mediocre material" — Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune [Source])
• "has the stuff of a stronger, more sophisticated film but has been processed to fit into the bland, synthetic Disney formula. Even so, both Miss Harris and Miss Foster make the most of their offbeat opportunity." — Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times [Source])
• "suffers from sluggish exposition, mediocre direction and a one-closeup-after-another method of composition advertising the film's eventual retirement to the Disney TV series, but it probably salvages things with juvenile audiences by finishing fast." — Gary Arnold, The Washington Post [Source])

Here are a few resources for listeners who want to dig deeper into Freaky Friday (1976):

1. "Freaky Friday" – Book vs. Movie podcast (Frolic Podcast Network) — This episode pits Mary Rodgers' original novel against both the 1976 and 2003 film adaptations, and discusses the interesting life of author Mary Rogers, the casual racism in the story and how it differs from the various adaptations, and which version the hosts like best. It's a great companion listen since it dives into the source novel your hosts admitted they hadn't read.
2. The Swapcast Podcast, Episode 5: "Freaky Friday (1976)" — A podcast entirely dedicated to body-swap movies, this episode covers the original film with a similarly irreverent tone, as the hosts check out the psychedelic switch in Disney's 1976 film, talking water skiing, gender politics, and worshipping at Jodie Foster's and Barbara Harris's feet — a fun match for listeners who enjoyed the "cotton candy" framing of your episode.
3. TCM's article on Freaky Friday (1976) — This piece from Turner Classic Movies is worth a read for background context, including details on how Foster's loyalty to her Disney contract prevented her from accepting the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, with George Lucas deciding to make Leia older once it was confirmed Foster wouldn't be cast, plus Barbara Harris's background as a founding member of The Second City improv troupe — both topics your hosts got excited about.

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Our most salient point this episode revolves around the exploration of the original 1976 film "Freaky Friday," a cinematic artifact that invites reflection on both familial relationships and the comedic intricacies of body-swapping narratives. We delve into the juxtaposition of the original and its remakes, particularly noting how the character dynamics manifest differently across versions. Our discussion reveals that while the film presents a series of humorous vignettes, it simultaneously offers poignant insights into self-discovery and personal growth, particularly for the characters of Annabelle and her mother. We engage with the film's cultural significance within the Disney canon, acknowledging its nostalgic value while critiquing its narrative structure and character development. Ultimately, this episode serves as a contemplative examination of how such stories resonate with audiences, both in their time and in contemporary discourse.

The dialogue surrounding the original 'Freaky Friday' serves as a springboard for a deeper inquiry into the intersections of nostalgia, gender, and identity within the realm of cinematic storytelling. The speakers articulate their varied reactions to the film, juxtaposing their childhood memories with contemporary critiques. They reflect on the film's comedic elements, particularly its reliance on physical humor and the charm of its lead actresses, while also grappling with its dated portrayals of gender dynamics. The speakers engage in a rich analysis of the film's narrative deficiencies, noting the lack of emotional depth in the mother-daughter relationship compared to sibling dynamics. This reflective conversation ultimately reveals the film's dual nature as both a source of entertainment and a cultural touchstone, prompting discussions about the complexities of familial love and the societal expectations placed upon women across generations. Their insights reveal a profound appreciation for the film's impact while acknowledging its limitations within a modern context.

Takeaways:

• The podcast elaborates on the historical significance of the 1976 film 'Freaky Friday', highlighting its impact on the genre of body-swap comedies.
• Insights into the evolution of storytelling techniques are discussed, with references to Freytag's pyramid and how 'Freaky Friday' deviates from traditional narrative structures.
• The speakers reflect on their personal experiences and nostalgic connections to the film, emphasizing its cultural relevance during its release period.
• A detailed examination of the performances by Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster showcases their comedic talents and physicality in the film's humorous scenarios.
• The discussion includes critiques of the film's narrative coherence, suggesting that it lacks a substantial character arc or significant emotional depth.
• The episode concludes with a commentary on the representation of gender roles in the film, contrasting it with contemporary portrayals in similar productions.

This episode asks whether Marty Supreme is Spielberg's version of Uncut Gems — sumptuous instead of feral, but just as committed to a hero who never actually becomes one — and finds a genuinely tragic American Dream story hiding inside all that Safdie chaos.

We tackle (backhand?) Marty Supreme, the Safdie brothers' Timothée Chalamet-led ping-pong biopic, and argue about whether its narcissistic, self-destructive protagonist actually earns his Best Original Screenplay nomination. It's a chaotic, funny, occasionally uncomfortable conversation covering Jewish identity, the American Dream gone wrong, and why one host had to stop watching halfway through and sleep on it. If you like Uncut Gems, awards-season debates, or just want to hear three friends disagree about whether a guy deserves redemption for holding a crying baby, this one's for you.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

Confirmed current streaming/rental/purchase options for Marty Supreme:

• HBO Max (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)
• YouTube TV (streaming)

The film's currently streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel and YouTube TV, and can be bought or rented digitally on Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home, and Amazon Video.

For the podcast episode itself, worth noting: Marty Supreme currently sits at #40 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts, having jumped 35 spots in a single day — a nice little coda for a movie whose entire thesis, per the hosts, is a guy clawing his way up a leaderboard against his own better judgment.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

Spotify (link needed)

Pocket Casts (link needed)

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Marty Supreme is the Safdie brothers' — well, Josh Safdie's, this time flying without his brother — chaotic, two-and-a-half-hour period piece about a table tennis hustler played by Timothée Chalamet, a man who wants one thing (to compete, to win, to matter) and destroys nearly everything in his path chasing it. It's loosely based on a real person, shot in the claustrophobic, tight-close-up style of a 1970s car chase even though the sets are enormous and the budget was clearly unlimited, and it earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination — a category, we'd argue, this exact kind of movie was invented for. If you've seen Uncut Gems, you already know the feeling: the propulsive dread, the awful protagonist you find yourself rooting for anyway. If you haven't, one of us hadn't either, and it shows.

What we actually spent the episode on is the gap between admiring a screenplay and enjoying the experience of sitting through it. Cole came in on the filmmaking itself — what a movie chooses to point its camera at, why every nameless "bartender number two" deserves a name, and how a line like "I'm Hitler's worst nightmare" is worth building a whole script around. Robby, who loved Uncut Gems, kept circling the thing the movie withholds: no hero's journey, no growth, a man propelled through the universe rather than steering it, holding a crying baby at the end without a shred of evidence he's changed. And Jaclynn — who paused the film halfway through, went to bed, and gave herself a twelve-hour palate cleanser before finishing it — declared it "the most safty of all safties," a claim she cheerfully admits she has no standing to make, having never finished a single Safdie film. Somewhere in there we also worked out that the climactic match, held in India in real life, was relocated to Japan and stocked with a David Mamet cameo purely, obviously, to torment Jaclynn personally. The Safdies have done so much for her.

So it's an argument about whether a movie can be exceptionally well-made and still leave you glad the popcorn's gone. We land in three different places on that and don't pretend to reconcile them, and along the way we get into the film's Jewishness — two of us are Jewish, both non-practicing — the discomfort of rooting for a repulsive man, the dog that starts smelly in a hotel and ends up driving the entire plot, and the eternal question of what a little kid would say if you asked them for four words to build this scene around. (Dog. Blood. Bathtub. Ping pong.)

• Josh Safdie — Director; Screenwriter — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008)
• Ronald Bronstein — Screenwriter; Producer; Editor — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), Daddy Longlegs (2009)
• Eli Bush — Producer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Licorice Pizza (2021), The Souvenir (2019)
• Anthony Katagas — Producer — also: 12 Years a Slave (2013), Uncut Gems (2019), Ad Astra (2019)
• Timothée Chalamet — Producer — also: Marty Supreme (2025)
• Darius Khondji — Cinematographer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Se7en (1995), Midnight in Paris (2011)
• Daniel Lopatin — Composer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), The Curse (2023)

• Timothée Chalamet — Marty Mauser — also: A Complete Unknown (2024), Dune (2021), Call Me by Your Name (2017)
• Gwyneth Paltrow — Kay Stone — also: Avengers: Endgame (2019), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Iron Man (2008)
• Odessa A'zion — Rachel Mizler — also: I Love L.A. (2025)
• Kevin O'Leary — Milton Rockwell — also: Shark Tank (2009)
• Tyler Okonma (Tyler, The Creator) — Wally — also: The Mindy Project (2015), Big Mouth (2017)
• Abel Ferrara — Ezra Mishkin — also: Bad Lieutenant (1992), King of New York (1990)
• Fran Drescher — Rebecca Mauser — also: The Nanny (1993), Saturday Night Fever (1977), This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
• David Mamet — Glenn Nordmann — also: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Beau Is Afraid (2023)
• Géza Röhrig — Béla Kletzki — also: Son of Saul (2015)
• Isaac Mizrahi — Merle — also: Sex and the City (1998), Gossip Girl (2007)
• Sandra Bernhard — Judy
• Emory Cohen — Ira Mizler
• Koto Kawaguchi — Koto Endo
• Penn Jillette — Hoff
• Pico Iyer — Ram Sethi
• John Catsimatidis — Christopher Galanis

The film earned nine Oscar nominations for the 2026 awards, including best picture, and best actor for Timothee Chalamet. Josh Safdie is nominated for best director. Miyako Bellizzi of Marty Supreme earned the nomination for best costume design. Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie scored another nomination for best film editing. Additional nominations included Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Cinematography (Darius Khondji), and Best Production Design (Jack Fisk and Adam Willis). Despite this haul, the film was completely shut out, not winning a single one of its nine nominations at the 2026 Oscars.

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Film Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Cinematography — NOMINATION
• Best Production Design — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design — NOMINATION
• Best Casting — NOMINATION

Timothée Chalamet won the first Golden Globe of his career for playing a hustling ping-pong phenom in the frenetic comedy "Marty Supreme." The film also received nominations for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay.

• Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy — NOMINATION
• Best Actor, Musical or Comedy (Timothée Chalamet) — WIN
• Best Screenplay — NOMINATION

Josh Safdie's ping-pong caper Marty Supreme earned 11 BAFTA nods. These included Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Leading Actor, and Best Supporting Actress for Odessa A'zion.

• Best Film — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Leading Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION
• (plus several additional technical/craft nominations, totaling 11)

The film received eight nominations at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards. These included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Casting/Ensemble, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Art Direction, with Timothée Chalamet recognized with the Best Actor award.

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — WIN
• Best Supporting Actress (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Art Direction — NOMINATION
• Best Casting/Ensemble — NOMINATION

• Best Cast in a Motion Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Male Actor in a Leading Role (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION

• Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION

• Best Theatrical Motion Picture — NOMINATION

• New York Film Critics Circle: Best Screenplay — WIN
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Editing — WIN
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Lead Performance (Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Ensemble — WIN
• National Board of Review: Top Ten Films of the Year (a non-competitive honor, noted for context)

Overall, Marty Supreme was one of the most nominated films of the 2025–2026 awards season, but its major competitive wins were concentrated in acting recognition for Timothée Chalamet (Golden Globe, Critics' Choice) and screenplay/editing wins from critics' circles — it went winless at the Oscars despite nine nominations.

Marty Supreme is loosely inspired by the real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman, with Josh Safdie developing the film after being given Reisman's 1974 memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, as Safdie and Bronstein began developing the film in 2018 after Safdie was given a copy of Reisman's 1974 memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler. However, Safdie found inspiration in the memoir's story and, using it as a springboard, invented his own characters and conflicts, with the filmmakers making clear that Marty Supreme is not a biopic or direct adaptation.

Book link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=The%20Money%20Player%3A%20The%20Confessions%20of%20America%27s%20Greatest%20Table%20Tennis%20Champion%20and%20Hustler

"Marty Supreme" — Confirmed Production Trivia

Timothée Chalamet secretly trained in table tennis for six years before the film was even greenlit. He entered the world of professional table tennis and had to learn to convincingly portray a pro player, succeeding so well that he was able to film all the table tennis scenes himself, without the help of a stunt double. He kept it up covertly across totally unrelated productions — he secretly trained for years while working on projects like The French Dispatch, Wonka, and Dune: Part Two, even bringing a table into the desert during "Dune" filming and to an Airbnb near Saint-Tropez during Cannes for "The French Dispatch." [Source]

The film's makeup effects fooled a co-star in real life. Make-up artist Michael Fontaine applied pockmarks, freckles and nicks to Timothée Chalamet's face to give him a more weathered, street appearance — an effect so convincing that Gwyneth Paltrow thought it was real, privately suggesting he try micro-needling to fix his "acne scars." [Source]

Robert Pattinson has a hidden cameo added entirely in post-production. Robert Pattinson voices an off-screen British Open umpire, a cameo Josh Safdie got him to record during post-production. [Source]

A specific real match result was deliberately changed for the film — but not just the country. The film's climactic defeat is based on Marty Reisman's real 1952 loss, but he was defeated by a Japanese player at a world championship, though in real life, the tournament was in Mumbai, not London as the movie shows — and in the film Marty's subsequent quest is to get to Japan for a rematch, meaning the production relocated the "away" tournament location twice over from the true history. [Source]

The film's darkest "war story" scene is drawn from a real Holocaust survivor's account, but the filmmakers cut the most extreme detail. The honey-covered-body anecdote referenced by the Kletzki character is based on a real player named Alex Ehrlich, who was a Polish Jew who, prior to competing in London, had been a member of the French Resistance, and was imprisoned at Auschwitz, where on several occasions he was spared the gas chamber when a Nazi recognized him as a table tennis champion — a detail Safdie and Bronstein chose to leave out of the film entirely, keeping only the honey story itself.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

This episode's argument is that Project Hail Mary only pretends to be hard sci-fi about a dying sun — strip away the spaceships and it's La La Land with an alien, and our real case is that the film's quiet radical move isn't the science, it's refusing to make the alien the villain.

We watch Project Hail Mary — Ryan Gosling's big-budget adaptation of Andy Weir's bestselling novel (from The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard and the directing team behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street) — and argue that despite the dying sun and one-way space mission, it's really "La La Land in space": a small, character-driven love story wrapped in a huge movie. Expect a close read of the alien sidekick Rocky (voiced by Meryl Streep), a debate over whether Gosling was miscast against the book's nerdier protagonist, and a real appreciation for a sci-fi film that, for once, doesn't make its aliens the enemy. No prior podcast knowledge, book-reading, or even movie-liking required — just come for the argument.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Prime Video (streaming with subscription, as of July 3)
• MGM+ (streaming with subscription)
• Apple TV (rent or purchase)
• Fandango at Home (rent or purchase)

The rollout here is a little bureaucratic for a movie about a guy racing to save the sun: Project Hail Mary premiered on Prime Video on July 3, a 105-day theatrical window, after hitting MGM+ first on June 18 as part of Amazon's traditional windows system moving from theaters to PVOD to the pay-one MGM+ window. So if you caught it on MGM+ two weeks ago, congrats on being an early adopter of "the obscure streaming service" — it's finally graduated to the app basically everyone already has.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

Spotify (link needed)

Pocket Casts (link needed)

RSS

Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Project Hail Mary is Amazon MGM's adaptation of Andy Weir's novel — the guy who wrote The Martian — directed by the Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street team, shot by Greg Fraser, and starring Ryan Gosling, who acquired the rights before the book was even published because he and Weir share an agent. The premise: the sun is dimming, another ice age is coming, and Earth's only hope is a middle-school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship twelve light-years from home with amnesia and, eventually, a rock-shaped alien named Rocky for company. It's a thousand-page novel that occurs mostly inside one man's head, compressed into a sub-three-hour buddy comedy — and against the odds, it works. Weir has gone on record calling this and The Martian "very, very different" stories. Two men stuck in space. Okay, Andy.

We came at this one sideways: Jaclynn brought it to the arc because she'd just been on a first double date with Robby's group of "normal, cool Americans who like cool movies" — the couple picked the film, Jaclynn played it cool and did the one thing no podcaster has ever done, which is not immediately mention she has a podcast. The through-line of our conversation is the argument between reading the book first or going in blind — Robby says know nothing, let the surprises land; Cole says for this one know everything, because the movie is doing more than you'll catch cold; Jaclynn splits the difference by reading fifty pages and then quitting, which we all somehow agreed was correct. Along the way you get Cole sitting arms-crossed judging it like it's Casablanca until the moment he gives up and worships at its feet, the Meryl Streep cameo that cost a fortune and was worth every cent, the puppeteer from Into the Woods' cow who voices Rocky, and a genuinely good point about how rare it is for an American film to make aliens a friend instead of a stand-in for whoever we've decided to be afraid of that decade.

We also got into the parts of the book the film smooths over — the non-consensual coma, the relativity that breaks Rocky's brain, the fact that a man with no family is a very convenient hero to throw at a suicide mission — and whether any of us would've gone back to Earth or stayed. Jaclynn's bringing the seven-pound dog. Robby's a better husband than the rest of us combined. And Dad, for the record, would absolutely not come get you, because one time Jaclynn took three days to reply to a message he sent from the top of an Alaskan glacier — she was in Russia, the time difference was wild, and she couldn't stop listening to Childish Gambino. Some grudges follow you twelve light-years.

• Phil Lord — Director; Producer — also: The Lego Movie (2014), 21 Jump Street (2012), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Christopher Miller — Director; Producer — also: The Lego Movie (2014), 22 Jump Street (2014), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Drew Goddard — Screenwriter — also: The Martian (2015)
• Ryan Gosling — Producer — also: La La Land (2016), Barbie (2023), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
• Amy Pascal — Producer — also: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Little Women (2019)
• Aditya Sood — Producer — also: The Martian (2015)
• Rachel O'Connor — Producer — also: 22 Jump Street (2014)
• Greig Fraser — Cinematographer — also: Dune (2021), The Batman (2022), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
• Daniel Pemberton — Composer — also: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

• Ryan Gosling — Ryland Grace — also: Blade Runner 2049 (2017), La La Land (2016), Drive (2011)
• Sandra Hüller — Eva Stratt — also: Anatomy of a Fall (2023), The Zone of Interest (2023), Toni Erdmann (2016)
• James Ortiz — Rocky (voice/performer) — also: Into the Woods (2014)
• Milana Vayntrub — Olesya Ilyukhina — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Ken Leung — Yao — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Lionel Boyce — Carl — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Priya Kansara — Mary — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)

The film Project Hail Mary is based on a 2021 hard science fiction novel by American writer Andy Weir that centers on science teacher and former biologist Ryland Grace, who wakes up aboard a spacecraft, afflicted with amnesia. You can find the novel here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611060/project-hail-mary-by-andy-weir/

Bookshop.org search link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Project%20Hail%20Mary

Here are five solid, confirmed production trivia items about Project Hail Mary:

1. The puppeteer voicing Rocky was never supposed to be the final voice.

Rocky was brought to life by theater puppeteer James Ortiz, who wasn't hired to voice Rocky but acted as the working voice on set so Gosling could have a scene partner speaking to him. He recited Rocky's dialogue for actor Ryan Gosling to play against, believing the lines would be replaced by a more famous actor, but directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller kept his performance in the film. Ortiz is also the same artist who designed the Milky White cow puppet for the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/james-ortiz-project-hail-mary-rocky-interview-1236553879/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ortiz)

2. Meryl Streep's cameo voice was a real, unpublicized favor.

During the scene where Grace tests translation voices for Rocky, one of the rejected options is genuinely Meryl Streep — producer Amy Pascal had done "The Post" and many, many movies with her, and after they asked, she said yes, and did many different versions of the line. Director Phil Lord admitted "You have never seen a group of filmmakers procrastinate longer" before working up the nerve to ask her. [Source]

3. The film's first assembly cut ran nearly four hours and was called "embarrassing" by other filmmakers.

Lord and Miller subjected some filmmaker friends of theirs to a three hour and 45-minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing, and the feedback the directing duo got was unanimous: "Get it way shorter." Miller noted "You just don't know how the scenes are going to land with an audience... We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn't land. It made it really easy to get it down to three hours." [Source]

4. Sandra Hüller's karaoke scene wasn't in the script at all — Gosling overheard her singing in real life.

Gosling explained: he just happened to hear Hüller singing to herself and became convinced that she needed to bring that talent to the movie — he'd heard her beautiful voice down the hallway on an aircraft carrier and asked if she could sing in the film. Hüller overcame her fear and tried to find a song overnight, finding a Harry Styles song, and tried to learn it overnight — the rights were secured and the scene shot the very next morning. (https://gizmodo.com/project-hail-mary-karaoke-scene-sandra-huller-ryan-gosling-2000738133, https://screenrant.com/project-hail-mary-karaoke-scene-improvised/)

5. The production largely avoided green screen, building a real practical spaceship set.

Director Phil Lord clarified: green screen is sometimes used in lieu of building sets or figuring out locations/lighting in advance, which can be noticeable if not done carefully, and is something they didn't want to do — they built the entire interior of the Hail Mary ship, with puppeteers working through a raised floor for Rocky's scenes, while wide space exteriors were handled digitally by ILM and Rocky was a seamless blend of puppetry and animation from Framestore. [Source]

Since Project Hail Mary (2026) is the episode subject, Phil Lord and Chris Miller's next confirmed project after it is a new whodunit adaptation.

Here's what's confirmed since Project Hail Mary:

Phil Lord (with longtime partner Chris Miller) is bringing a classic whodunnit to the big screen, according to IndieWire, specifically a "Murder, She Wrote" movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, which has set a 2027 holiday release with The Hollywood Reporter.

Drew Goddard is heading into the Matrix franchise: in April 2024, a new "Matrix" movie was announced to be in the works, with Drew Goddard writing and directing, per The Hollywood Reporter. Goddard has been tapped to write and direct a new Matrix feature for Warner Bros., marking the first Matrix film not to directly involve creators Lana and Lilly Wachowski, though Lana Wachowski will serve as an executive producer.

We haven't covered The Matrix 5 yet — but we probably should.

Here they are:

• "One stellar Gosling + one arachnid-ish alien + one Hail Mary mission = lightning in a spaceship." — critic quote, Rotten Tomatoes consensus [Source]
• "While you can't help but marvel at the visuals and applaud the commitment of Gosling's endearing performance, what also makes Project Hail Mary so gosh darn lovable is that it imbues us with child-like wonder from scenes that pay homage to such classics as E.T., Flight of the Navigator and, yes, Rocky." — Randy Myers, The Mercury News (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• "Does it have many original ideas of its own? Perhaps not. But its greatest hits mixtape of other people's has been compiled with such flair – as well as a sound comprehension of why they worked so well the first time – that it's hard not to be swept up regardless." — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• "At almost every turn, Project Hail Mary attempts to convince you that it is groundbreaking, innovative filmmaking." — Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• Owen Gleiberman at Variety was one of the few outright negative voices, calling it "not a very good movie" — Owen Gleiberman, Variety (via https://cinapse.co/project-hail-mary-reviews/)
• "I've known Phil Lord and Chris Miller for a very long time — I've been able to watch their careers from the very beginning; these gents have become giants, retaining their unique, humanistic, hilarious voice all along the way. Project Hail Mary is terrific. Go see this picture." — Scott M. Gimple, via Twitter/X (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ryan-gosling-project-hail-mary-first-reactions-1236517129/)
• Regarding the directors screening an early cut: "Project Hail Mary Directors Screened a Nearly Four-Hour Cut to Other Filmmakers and Were Told to 'Get It Way Shorter': 'It Was Embarrassing'" — headline describing filmmaker feedback, Variety, reported by Zack Sharf (via Wikipedia citation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))

Here are a few resources for listeners who want to go deeper on Project Hail Mary:

InSession Film Podcast — "Podcast Review: Project Hail Mary" (insessionfilm.com) — A dedicated movie-podcast episode discussing the film, with us noting they discuss Phil Lord and Chris Miller's film starring Ryan Gosling, offering both praise and some critical pushback — a good companion for listeners who want a more traditional film-critic take.

Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time — "Project Hail Mary: Book vs Movie" (Apple Podcasts) — This episode is especially useful for the book-to-film comparison angle, as it breaks down the movie version of Andy Weir's novel, comparing the film with the technical problem-solving of the original, and digs into which complex scientific explanations were streamlined for Hollywood pacing.

Rolling Stone — "How Ryan Gosling Ascends to Tom Hanks-Level Movie Stardom in 'Project Hail Mary'" (rollingstone.com) — Not a podcast, but a substantial essay/interview with directors Lord and Miller that directly addresses points raised in the episode, including their explanation for why they cut extra Earth-based relationships from the script: they tried to figure out what relationship Grace was leaving behind on Earth, but packing Earth with relationships that needed resolving wasn't what the book did — this is a story about someone who's lonely on Earth, makes a friend in space, and stays there. It's a great deep-dive for listeners curious about the adaptation choices the podcast hosts debated (especially the ending and Gosling's casting).

ARC_HOBBES_SHAW — Both involve directors/franchises connected to the "Lego movie guys" lineage of action-comedy filmmaking (Hobbs & Shaw shares the same buddy-comedy-wrapped-in-a-blockbuster sensibility we explicitly compare Project Hail Mary to via 21/22 Jump Street).

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Pengun Random House interview with Andy Weir:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H_srBMz4JQ

This episode's whole argument boils down to Jaclynn'ss tagline, repeated like a confession — "this movie is smarter than me" — and we spend an hour proving that the vampires are the least scary thing in Sinners, since Coogler already gave the real monster a name: Mississippi.

We tackle Sinners, Ryan Coogler's Oscar-nominated vampire movie starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role — and argue that the Jim Crow South it depicts is scarier than any bloodsucker in it. It's a horror movie, a heist movie, a Western, and a musical all executed "at a foundational level" before Coogler braids them together, and The Arc breaks down how a story about a juke joint becomes a full allegory for cultural exploitation, assimilation, and who gets to own the blues. No prior viewing required, but good luck not immediately renting it afterward.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• HBO Max (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• YouTube (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

The subscription option comes with an unusually thoughtful footnote for a horror blockbuster: HBO Max also has a Black American Sign Language version of the movie to stream, making it, per coverage of the release, the first-ever Black American Sign Language version of a major film. Worth knowing before you queue it up for the group.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Sinners is Ryan Coogler's 1932 Mississippi vampire movie — twin brothers, both played by Michael B. Jordan, come back from Chicago to open a juke joint in a barn for one night, and then the vampires arrive. That's the setup, and it is also almost beside the point. The film works completely as a vampire movie you could watch without thinking twice about it; it also keeps opening up, on a second and third viewing, into something about white supremacy, appropriation, and what it means to turn a people's music — and a people themselves — into property to be bought and sold. Coogler pulls tropes from the Western, the heist, the musical, and horror and does each so cleanly that the film stops feeling like a mishmash and starts feeling like its own thing. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay, which is how it landed here: we set out to do something Oscar-centric, Robby has loved that category since high school, and — Cole's theory — Jaclynn had been looking for a reason to talk about Sinners for eleven months anyway. Not untrue.

What we kept circling is that the real horror isn't the vampires. Vampires have rules — sunlight, garlic, a stake — and the 1930s Jim Crow South does not. The chain gang, the cotton fields, the Klan that shows up at the very end after the supernatural threat is already dead: that's the part that stays with you, and the part that still felt true watching it in 2026. Robby walked out of the theater the first time saying he'd seen it all before, a well-made vampire movie he recognized — and the argument of the whole episode is what happens when you look again and realize it was an allegory the entire time. Jaclynn kept coming back to one line: this movie is smarter than me. She found her way into loving the two brothers through Annie, who humanizes them, and we spend real time on how the scene where Sammy plays and the music opens a door across the past, present, and future of Black music is doing the actual heavy lifting.

We are not the people to explain this film to you — Coogler and his cast and crew are, and honestly we'd rather just listen to him talk about it. What we can offer is three of us watching it more than once and disagreeing productively about it: whether "mishmash" or "tapestry" is the fairer word (Dad lobbies hard for tapestry; Jaclynn holds out because a tapestry is too neat), whether the ending should have stopped when it first seemed to, and why the bookend structure feels elegant here in a way it feels like a magic trick in Fleabag. You do not have to have seen Sinners to follow along — though if you haven't, do yourself a favor and don't read any further about it before you do. Then come back.

• Ryan Coogler — Director — also: Sinners (2025), Black Panther (2018), Creed (2015)
• Ryan Coogler — Screenwriter — also: Sinners (2025), Black Panther (2018), Fruitvale Station (2013)
• Ryan Coogler — Producer — also: Sinners (2025)
• Zinzi Coogler — Producer — also: Sinners (2025)
• Sev Ohanian — Producer — also: Sinners (2025)
• Autumn Durald Arkapaw — Cinematographer — also: Sinners (2025), Loki (2021), Teen Spirit (2018)
• Ludwig Göransson — Composer — also: Sinners (2025), Black Panther (2018), Oppenheimer (2023)

• Michael B. Jordan — Smoke / Stack — also: Creed (2015), Black Panther (2018), Fruitvale Station (2013)
• Hailee Steinfeld — Mary — also: True Grit (2010), Bumblebee (2018), Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)
• Miles Caton — Sammie "Preacher Boy" Moore — also: Sinners (2025)
• Jack O'Connell — Remmick — also: Unbroken (2014), '71 (2014), Skins (2007)
• Wunmi Mosaku — Annie — also: Loki (2021), Lovecraft Country (2020), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
• Jayme Lawson — Pearline — also: The Woman King (2022), The Batman (2022), Farewell Amor (2020)
• Omar Benson Miller — Cornbread — also: Ballers (2015), 8 Mile (2002), CSI: Miami (2007)
• Delroy Lindo — Delta Slim — also: Da 5 Bloods (2020), Malcolm X (1992), Get Shorty (1995)
• Li Jun Li — Grace Chow — also: Babylon (2022), Minority Report (2002)
• Yao — Bo Chow — also: Sinners (2025)
• Lola Kirke — Joan — also: Mozart in the Jungle (2014), Gone Girl (2014)
• Buddy Guy — Old Sammie — also: Sinners (2025)
• Saul Williams — Jedidiah Moore — also: Slam (1998)

Ryan Coogler) real awards history:

Sinners garnered a record-breaking 16 nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, winning four: Best Actor (Jordan), Best Original Screenplay (Coogler), Best Cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who became the first woman to win in the category), and Best Original Score (Göransson). Additional nominations included best picture; director; supporting actress (Wunmi Mosaku); actor in a supporting role (Delroy Lindo); casting; production design; costume design; film editing; makeup and hairstyling; sound; visual effects; and original song for "I Lied to You".

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Ryan Coogler) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan) — WIN
• Best Supporting Actor (Delroy Lindo) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay (Ryan Coogler) — WIN
• Best Cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw) — WIN
• Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson) — WIN
• Best Original Song ("I Lied to You") — NOMINATION
• Best Casting — NOMINATION
• Best Production Design — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design — NOMINATION
• Best Film Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling — NOMINATION
• Best Sound — NOMINATION
• Best Visual Effects — NOMINATION

Sinners received thirteen nominations at the 79th British Academy Film Awards and won three awards at the ceremony (for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score), making it the film with the most nominations and wins for a film by a Black director in BAFTA history.

• Best Original Screenplay — WIN
• Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku) — WIN
• Best Original Score — WIN
• 10 additional nominations across other categories — NOMINATION

At the Golden Globes, Sinners received Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement and Best Original Score.

• Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement — WIN
• Best Original Score — WIN

• Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture — WIN
• Male Actor in a Leading Role (Michael B. Jordan) — WIN
• Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Wunmi Mosaku) — NOMINATION
• Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Miles Caton) — NOMINATION
• Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture — NOMINATION

Sinners won in the WGA's Original Screenplay category, with writer-director Ryan Coogler topping a slate of nominees that included its fellow Oscar contender Marty Supreme.

• Best Original Screenplay — WIN

The DGA announced that this year's five contenders are Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another, Ryan Coogler for Sinners, Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein, Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme, and Chloé Zhao for Hamnet, marking Coogler's first-ever DGA nomination.

• Outstanding Directing – Feature Film (Ryan Coogler) — NOMINATION

Sinners received 17 Critics' Choice Award nominations and won four, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting and Ensemble, Best Original Score, and Best Young Actor/Actress (Miles Caton).

• Best Original Screenplay — WIN
• Best Casting/Ensemble — WIN
• Best Original Score — WIN
• Best Young Actor/Actress (Miles Caton) — WIN
• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku) — NOMINATION
• Additional nominations across other technical categories — NOMINATION

Sinners received a historic 18 nominations and 13 wins at the 57th NAACP Image Awards, including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture, with additional wins for director, lead actor, supporting actor (Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (Wunmi Mosaku), and breakthrough performance (Caton).

• Outstanding Motion Picture — WIN
• Outstanding Director — WIN
• Outstanding Actor (Michael B. Jordan) — WIN
• Outstanding Supporting

Here are five surprising production facts about Sinners:

1. Ryan Coogler negotiated an unprecedented ownership deal with Warner Bros.

As part of getting the film made, Coogler negotiated a historic deal with Warner Bros., securing full ownership rights after 25 years, first-dollar gross participation, and final cut privileges, an arrangement that industry observers saw as a serious challenge to how studios traditionally do business. [Source]

2. The film's cinematographer made cinema history by combining two massive, rarely-used film formats that had never been paired before.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw shot Sinners on large format Kodak filmstock in 5-perf 65mm and 15-perf IMAX formats, including Kodak Ektachrome, which was specially manufactured in 65mm by Kodak for the production. She became the first female DP to shoot 65mm in IMAX format, and the first cinematographer to incorporate 65mm in its widest aspect ratio, Anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76:1), and tallest aspect ratio, IMAX format (1.43:1), in the same production.

3. Coogler originally imagined the movie as a small, 16mm production — the opposite of what it became.

Despite the eventual scale, Coogler didn't originally conceive of "Sinners" in large format — the director first thought of the film as being a good fit for 16mm. The decision to go big only came after Warner Bros. asked if they'd considered a larger format, which sent Coogler down the path toward Ultra Panavision and IMAX.

4. A custom lens was built just for one specific dreamlike moment in the film.

Cinematographer Durald Arkapaw had Panavision's optical engineer create another custom lens for Sinners: a Petzval 80mm for the IMAX camera, which comes into play for a dreamlike moment with Smoke and Annie at the end of the film, described as having heavy blur and aberration at the edges.

5. The very first scene the production actually filmed was the film's final, decades-later epilogue.

Despite where it falls in the story, Coogler revealed their actual first production day was the post-credits scene when Michael B. Jordan comes in wearing a Coogi sweater and sits down with 80-year-old Sammy — meaning the movie's emotional coda was shot before anything else.

Bonus/related detail: The character of teenage musician Sammie was named as a tribute to a real person — James, the uncle whose death inspired the film, had married into Coogler's family by marrying Coogler's aunt Sammie, and the Sammie character in "Sinners" is named after her. [Source]

Here are a few resources listeners can turn to for a deeper dive on Sinners:

The New Yorker Radio Hour — "Ryan Coogler on 'Sinners,' His Epic Film About Race, Music..." In this segment, Coogler sat down with New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb to discuss the recurrent themes of history, faith, and race in his work, and how he refracted them through the lens of horror in "Sinners." Worth a listen for a rigorous, journalistic conversation about how Coogler channels real history into genre filmmaking.

Script Apart — Episode 155: "Sinners with Ryan Coogler" This spoiler-filled interview covers the conversations with his Uncle James and his Grandmother that helped inform this vampire period piece, and gets into the meaning of Sinners' dance sequence, in which Sammy summons the ghosts of Black musicians past and future — a great companion for listeners who want the screenwriting-craft angle behind the film's central allegory.

The Gothic Library — "Sinners: Vampires and the Jim Crow South" (essay) This piece argues that Sinners offers a moral through a racial lens rather than a religious one, with Remmick tempting Sammie and his friends by promising a utopia of racial equality within his vampire family, though true equality shouldn't mean surrendering one's individual identity — a smart complement to the episode's discussion of "the oppressed becoming oppressors" and the film's subversion of typical vampire-genre rules.

ARC_FLEABAG_S02_EP_01 — The Sinners episode explicitly compares its bookend/opening structural device to the Fleabag Season 2 cold open (bloody nose, mystery woman), directly discussing that episode's technique as a point of comparison.

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Below are links to full length interviews with the writer, himself, that the episode uses a few quotes from:

Hanna Flint - Ryan Coogler talks Sinners, Vampires, and Capitalism

On Film - with Kevin McCarthy - Autumn Durald Arkapaw talks Sinners, Cinematography, IMAX, and more.

In the grand tradition of this show, we watched this out of order in order to celebrate springing forward for Daylight Savings Time so true fans of "Back To The Future," please, be nice in the comments section because we have nothing but love for the genre (yes, "Back To The Future" is a genre unto itself).

We ask whether Back to the Future Part II is even a movie or just a very expensive, very confident first act — all hoverboards and fax machines standing in for the character work it never bothers to do.

On The Arc, three friends watch movies out of order on purpose — this time it's Back to the Future Part II, tackled cold with no rewatch of the original. The verdict: a technical marvel of practical effects and hoverboards that's all plot and no story, functioning less like a movie than an extended, very fun first act. Expect a genuine defense of fax machines, a rant about Jennifer getting treated like a piece of luggage, and an argument about whether wealth is really just a failure of imagination. You don't need to have seen either Back to the Future film to enjoy this one — though it helps.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Peacock (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

All three trilogy entries live together on Peacock, which tracks — Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III are currently available to stream via Peacock, so anyone inspired to finally watch the movies in order has no excuse.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Back to the Future Part II is the 1989 middle child of Robert Zemeckis's trilogy — the one that picks up in the exact garage where the first movie left off, launches Marty McFly into a 2015 of hoverboards and self-lacing shoes and, apparently, multiple household fax machines, then folds back on itself into the 1955 of the original film. It was a technical marvel when it arrived, and, watching it in 2025 — a year that has now come and gone without the flying cars — it's become a document of what 1989 hoped and feared: that Japan would economically eat America, that the future would just be the past with more faxes. We came to it the way we come to most things, which is to say backwards and out of order: this is a podcast that started Freakier Friday before Freaky Friday and watched a Marvel movie having seen no other Marvel movies, so of course we began Back to the Future with the second one and have no firm plans to ever watch the first.

What we actually spent the hour on is the gap between plot and story — the thing this movie has a genuine surplus of one and a real shortage of the other. Robby, who was fascinated and on high alert the whole time, kept circling how it's exposition, exposition, exposition until the last three minutes, when a single kite string floating silently down finally delivered the stakes the whole film had been withholding. Cole, who tried to research it as a Film and gave up by the second shot, had the most fun he's had watching a movie in ages and then landed the episode's best idea anyway: that wealth and jealousy and poverty are never absolute, they're measured against whatever your imagination can reach — the future McFlys have seventeen fax machines and a drive-by shooting on the same street. And Jaclynn watched the plot mechanics of two Martys stranded in the same timeline quietly break her brain, while also refusing to let the movie off the hook for how it treats Jennifer, whose unconscious body gets dumped on porches like a prop. We also spend real time on the parts that don't hold up — the Reagan-era anxieties and the ugly caricature of Marty's Japanese boss — without pretending they aren't there.

If you've seen this movie a dozen times and never questioned it, or you've never seen it and are wondering whether it's worth two hours, this is three friends taking a "silly" sequel seriously enough to find both the racism and the accidental philosophy in it — plus a genuine argument that Back to the Future Part II isn't a second act at all, it's act one of a story that doesn't pay off until the third film. Also Dad brags at length about renting a DeLorean for a Broadway musical that never got shot, learns that people get married inside them, and gets caught rolling his eyes at his own pun.

• Robert Zemeckis — Director — also: Back to the Future (1985), Forrest Gump (1994), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Bob Gale — Screenwriter — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990), 1941 (1979)
• Bob Gale — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Used Cars (1980)
• Neil Canton — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
• Steven Spielberg — Executive Producer — also: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jaws (1975)
• Kathleen Kennedy — Executive Producer — also: Poltergeist (1982), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• Frank Marshall — Executive Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Dean Cundey — Cinematographer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Romancing the Stone (1984)
• Alan Silvestri — Composer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Forrest Gump (1994)

• Michael J. Fox — Marty McFly / Marty McFly Jr. / Marlene McFly — also: Back to the Future (1985), Family Ties (1982), Spin City (1996)
• Christopher Lloyd — Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown — also: Back to the Future (1985), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Lea Thompson — Lorraine Baines McFly / Lorraine Tannen — also: Back to the Future (1985), Red Dawn (1984), Howard the Duck (1986)
• Thomas F. Wilson — Biff Tannen / Griff Tannen — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Elisabeth Shue — Jennifer Parker — also: The Karate Kid (1984), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988)
• Jeffrey Weissman — George McFly — also: Back to the Future Part II (1989)
• Harry Waters Jr. — Marvin Berry — also: Back to the Future (1985)

• Academy Awards (Oscars): Best Visual Effects — NOMINATION It was nominated in 1990 for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (John Bell, Steve Gawley, Michael Lantieri and Ken Ralston), but lost to The Abyss.
• BAFTA Awards: Best Special Visual Effects — WIN The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects (Ken Ralston, Michael Lantieri, John Bell and Steve Gawley)

- Saturn Awards (Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films):

- Best Special Effects — WIN The film won the Saturn Award for Best Special Effects (for Ken Ralston, the special effects supervisor)

- Best Science Fiction Film — NOMINATION

- Best Costumes (Joanna Johnston) — NOMINATION

- Best Make-Up — NOMINATION

These last three Saturn nominations are drawn from the film's official awards record.

Here are five verified, surprising production trivia items about Back to the Future Part II:

Crispin Glover's absence sparked a landmark Hollywood lawsuit. When Crispin Glover declined to return as George McFly, the production reused old footage from the first film and had another actor, Jeffrey Weissman, play George with prosthetics and camera tricks, going so far as to hide his face by having him "wearing sunglasses, from the back, upside-down in an Ortho-lev harness, or out of focus in the background." Glover sued, and the suit led to new clauses in Screen Actors Guild agreements barring producers from reproducing another actor's likeness without permission — a case still cited today as a key precedent in personality rights for actors amid increasing use of special effects and digital techniques. [Source]

The film's opening scene is a shot-for-shot remake necessitated by a real-life family tragedy. Claudia Wells had planned to reprise her role as Jennifer, but she had to drop out to take care of her mother, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. As a result, after casting Elisabeth Shue as a replacement, the producers re-shot the closing scenes of the first film for the beginning of Part II, in a nearly shot-for-shot match with the original. [Source]

A groundbreaking motion-control camera system let Michael J. Fox act opposite himself — and move the camera while doing it. For the scene with three Fox characters interacting, the effects house used one of its first forays into digital compositing along with the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which for the first time allowed a completely dynamic scene where the camera itself could move while an actor played multiple interacting characters. [Source]

The "future" hoverboards weren't hidden tech — they were simple props, and Zemeckis's joke about them backfired. In behind-the-scenes materials, Robert Zemeckis jokingly claimed the hoverboards used for filming were real and just hadn't been sold to the public over safety concerns, and because it was framed as a factual interview, most people missed the sarcasm and began calling toy stores asking for them to be released. In reality, the hoverboards were simply wooden props attached to the actors' feet, with the actors suspended by cables that were erased in post-production. (https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/back-to-the-future-ii-trivia-quiz/54266336; https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/BackToTheFuturePartII)

The DeLorean was almost a refrigerator, and the climax nearly hinged on a nuclear blast instead of a lightning strike. Early drafts of the script had Marty harnessing the power of a nuclear bomb test explosion to return to the future, but the special effects required were too expensive to realistically pull off, leading the filmmakers to a forgotten courthouse set on the Universal backlot instead — which became the basis for the iconic clock tower climax. [Source]

Robert Zemeckis directed Here, a 2024 American drama produced and directed by Zemeckis, co-written with Eric Roth, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. The film stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly, with digital de-aging via generative AI used to have the cast portray their characters across decades. He's since moved on to directing the Netflix thriller "The Last Mrs. Parrish," starring Jennifer Lopez, with Netflix having landed the rights to Liv Constantine's best-selling book, about a con artist who targets a wealthy couple by befriending the wife and seducing the husband, only to discover the wife's life is more complicated than she imagined.

Bob Gale, meanwhile, has stayed close to home base — he co-wrote the book for Back to the Future: The Musical, which premiered at Manchester Opera House in February 2020 ahead of a Broadway production that opened August 3, 2023. He's also confirmed to be helping franchise star Michael J. Fox write a book about his experience making the trilogy, titled "Future Boy." As for a fourth film, Gale has been blunt: he said he replies "F*** you" when asked about 'Back to the Future 4.'

We haven't covered Here yet — but we probably should.

Based on documented reviews and critic writings, here are confirmed quotes from named critics (not the film's own cast/crew) about Back to the Future Part II:

• "Back to the Future Part II is all manic and wacky." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• "I've never seen another movie in such a hurry or with so much shouting." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• "But Future II—which is the middle film of a trilogy—smacks of the assembly line." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, criticizing it for lacking the "genuine power of the original" but praising it for its "zaniness" and "screwball jokes."
• Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film is "ready for bigger and better things" and later said that it "manages to be giddily and merrily mind-boggling, rather than confusing."
• Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader gave the film a negative review, criticizing Zemeckis and Gale for turning the characters into "strident geeks" and for making the frenetic action formulaic, and believed that it contained "rampant misogyny," because the character of Jennifer Parker "is knocked unconscious early on so she won't interfere with the little-boy games."
• Variety said, "[Director Robert] Zemeckis' fascination with having characters interact at different ages of their lives hurts it visually, and strains credibility past the breaking point, by forcing him to rely on some very cheesy makeup designs."

Here are a few resources listeners can check out for more on Back to the Future Part II:

Podcast Like It's 1989 — "Back to the Future Part II w/ Emily St. James" (Patreon episode, hosted by Kenny Neibart and Phil Iscove, released August 2, 2021). This episode brings on Vox writer Emily St. James as a guest, and we take the unique opportunity to view the movie in a vacuum, apart from the first and last entries in the series, discussing their nostalgia for the sequel, the relatively small scale of its setpieces, and how despite its imperfections it still feels like a perfect movie.

Box Office Pulp — "Back to the Future Part II Commentary Track" (released March 20, 2019, run time about 2 hours). This is a scene-specific audio commentary track meant to be played alongside the film, and it digs into the production history, the thought process behind breaking the story, why that story is kind of broken, the film's approach to future design, and Zemeckis' push to do things totally unique — good for listeners who want a deep, structural dive to pair directly with a rewatch.

Den of Geek — "Giving Back to the Future Part II Its Due" (essay by Simon Brew). This is a reappraisal essay that's useful counterpoint to the episode's critical take: it acknowledges that many critics have long argued Part II is the most muddled of the trilogy, and even notes that Zemeckis himself has admitted it's the film he's least happy with, given how quickly he had to edit it since Part II and Part III were shot back to back, while still making the case for its ambition — praising its sheer level of ambition, since Zemeckis and Gale had boxed themselves into a corner with the original film's cliffhanger ending, written without any real belief a sequel was coming.

Back to the Future — This episode is the direct sequel discussion, explicitly building on and comparing itself throughout to our prior coverage of the original Back to the Future.

Or consider starting from the beginning — Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.